to think that the NHS is really quite shit and that not everyone who works in it is an underpaid hero?

[Adenosine]

There is a strange British preoccupation with the NHS which I think prevents honest public dialogue about its many shortcomings. At the time it was set up it was innovative, but now there are many other universal healthcare systems most of which are better than the NHS and many of which cost less money.

It's ranked low globally and really quite shit yet few people dare criticise or. AIBU to think that we really need to be far more critical?

Thankfully procurement is being centralised, this should help with wastage and also, try and eliminate the postcode lottery. Here I have always got a GP appointment the same day, routine appointments for contraception check ups etc within a week, and care has been good. This obviously isn't the case everywhere, and these disparities should be addressed. Like any job, many are amazing and remain caring and compassionate despite challenging circumstances; and some are horrendous and should do something else. I think people are scared to make the fundamental changes so desperately needed because of its mythical status. The truth is though is that it hasn't evolved. Technology is great, but expensive. Mental health is more widely recognised now, but there's severe shortages. For it to survive it needs to be really looked at, and people who know what needs to be done listened to, rather than just someone looking through copious reports.

YABU.

Firstly, it isn’t ranked low.

Secondly, it isn’t really quite shit. Over the last 30odd years it has

• Saved my life at least twice
• Saved the life of my DF, and then provided him with rehab so he is now like a new man
• Saved the life of my MIL
• Saved the life of my DSM following an accident that she may well not have survived, and is still providing aftercare to her years later
• Saved the life of a friend with a difficult to treat and rare breast cancer.
• has given my DGM another 7 very good years so far despite heart failure, and kept her able to see despite her degenerative eye condition
• Couldn’t save the life of my DGF, but tried, and treated him with care, dignity and respect to the end.
• Sorted out several of my broken limbs
• Safely delivered my DD and countless other babies of relatives and friends. Saved the lives of some of those babies and their mums.
• Kept an eye on a relative with epilepsy.
• Provided me with contraception since my teens
• Sorted my skin out every time I have a flare up of my rosacea
• Vaccinated myself and my family against potentially dangerous diseases

That’s just the bits I can think of off the top of my head.

All free at the point of use and without me ever having to stress about whether I’ll be covered or the cost. (Yes. I pay taxes, but I’m pretty happy I’ve got value for money there, they don’t go up depending on how much you need to use, and I’m pretty sure there won’t be a significant reduction in the tax I’ll pay if the system is sold off by the torieschanged.)

Is the system perfect? No, of course not. Occasionally I’ve had to wait longer than I would have liked for a GP appointment for my skin, or sat in A&E with the wrist I broke falling over on my stupidly high teenage heels. But I certainly didn’t wait too long when I was blue lighted in with an asthma attack.

I’ve come across the odd abrupt nurse, and know of admin errors resulting in missed referrals etc, but until we have a health service manned by robots it can never be infallible to human error.

I also happen to work in the NHS. I love my job and I’m very lucky in that I don’t consider myself to be underpaid at all. However, I work with, am related to, and have friends who are overworked and underpaid nurses. There may have been a heavily publicised ‘33% increase’ in wage a few years ago, but I can assure you this was utter bollocks and political spin, following years of pay cuts in real terms.

I’ve seen errors made and less than perfect care in my own department. Rarely, mostly down to human error somewhere along the line (usually where someone is stretched due to short staffing), and always reported and learned from. However, I’ve also seen errors made by private consultants and companies. I did some private work myself in the past. Due to the way it was set up those patients often did not have better care, and may not even have been seen any quicker than they would have done on the NHS by the time a suitable appointment was found and insurance companies confirmed they were covered (and what additional costs the patient would be liable for). I was being paid more but I certainly wasn’t providing anything better than I was for NHS - I cared just as much and my expertise didn’t suddenly increase for the paying patient. I refuse to do private work now.

The NHS should certainly not be above criticism. However it also shouldn’t be used as political pawn, and it categorically should not be sold off by the tories to their mates.

Seems an odd time to start such a post OP. Are you a conservative candidate unable to sleep having seen how strongly the public feel about the NHS you want to decimate?

My OH used to live in the states.
It's the sort of place where people do literally die because they can't afford that ambulance ride, they can't afford treatment.
Where people have skin infections and put anti-bacterial gel on it because they can't afford anti-biotics and just hope for the best.
Poverty in the US is worse than poverty in the UK.

YANBU

It always amuses me when people say the NHS is the ‘envy of the world’ but, with the exception of the poorest nations and the uninsured in the US, I have never heard of anyone envying it, more looking down upon it.

What is enviable about being about 20th in the world for cancer and cardiac survival, and closer to 30th in the world for stroke outcomes, despite being 7th in the world in terms of GDP?!

Top this up with a culture of ‘care’ where the patient is often neglected and ignored, especially if elderly, with dirty noisy wards. And a GP system which has effectively collapsed, with many surgeries not really offering appointments to people who fall sick until they either recover or get dick enough to go to A&E, where they can then wait 5 hours to be seen.

There are many ways to model a health care system and we need to start changing.

Rankings do not take into account the level of funding for each system.
If you look at OECD, the U.K. spends the least on healthcare per capita.

Health consumption expenditures per capita, U.S. dollars, PPP adjusted, 2017

United States. $10,224
Switzerland. $8,009
Germany. $5,728
Sweden. $5,511
Austria. $5,440
Netherlands. $5,386
Comparable Country Average. $5,280
France. $4,902
Canada. $4,826
Belgium. $4,774
Japan. $4,717
Australia. $4,543
United Kingdom. $4,246

Notes: U.S. value obtained from National Health Expenditure data. Health consumption does not include investments in structures, equipment, or research.

Source: KFF analysis of OECD and National Health Expenditure (NHE) data.

And do you really think that you'll save a fortune in tax? Remember this is the American system, they won't reduce tax, at very least not significantly, instead it'll just go in the pockets of the greedy men who rule the country.

JolieOBrien You may have been married to a (singular, I assume) hospital manager who worked in the NHS for 20 years but I don’t think that means you “should know”. I personally currently work in the NHS and have done for 15 years, I assure you, as would my colleagues as well as friends and family who also work for the NHS, it absolutely is being sold off. Not as a whole, but bit by bit.

As a recipient of NHS surgery which would cost £65,000 in the USA, not counting an extra 3 days in hospital, I think it’s fairly good.
I was part of a chat room where they were advising women how to vent their wound drains on aeroplanes so they don’t explode with the pressure. This is because in the USA you get sent to the cheapest hospital which might be thousands of miles away and then they throw you out after 2-3 days to save money.
I also have a widowed friend who still has a house for his four children, in the USA he would have lost it when the insurance money ran out, which it would have done as his wife took 5 years to die of cancer.

Healthcare in Australia (free, it's called medicare) is so good compared to the NHS. If I want to see a doctor, I can just either walk into a surgery or open my phone and book one for when suits me. I can always get n appointment within 10 mins if I wanted. When I lived in England, I'd have to wait weeks (sometimes up to six weeks!!!).
My husband has been in hospital twice since we have lived here and each time they have been faultless and have gone above and beyond. Unfortunately we cannot say the same for the NHS when he was in hospital there.
I'm currently heavily pregnant and again, the care I have received here has been faultless. I did really get treated well on the NHS for my three previous pregnancies however, despite the waiting time between appointments. I just felt when I did give birth in the UK, each time I was rushed and treated as just another number.

I have several friends here in Australia who are nurses and doctors. They all state they're happier working over here.
I suppose every system has its faults but British people are conditioned to believe that their country are very lucky to have the NHS and that they're the only country to have "free" healthcare. I know I used to think like that anyway. From looking at my friend's facebook posts that are NHS subject based, it seems anyone who ever says anything negative about the NHS is immediately blasted and told they're ungrateful blah blah blah.

@KTCluck

Do you mean it is being privatized? Because a lot of services have been given to private companies, when I worked at The Royal Shrewsbury Hospital many years ago we used a private cleaning company to clean the labs and wards because it was cheaper.

Some of its functions are being contracted out. In honesty I've found virgin care great, but this shouldn't be the case and I don't agree that more should be contracted to private companies. But again, no one wants to actually try to resolve the issues, rather than just throw more money at it (it undoubtedly needs more money, but also an overhaul).

In recent years we've been at hospitals a lot with our parents. FIL (Parkinson's) treated like a king. My DM treatment ss less so. No abuse, just very functional with no warmth whatsoever from any staff. No smiles, even to us visitors. Very snappy from nurses and auxiliaries alike. Mentioning this to a few people, we got put in our place about nurses being overworked,we should be grateful she was treated. Yet, when we got to A&e the paramedic had a grand old chat with a porter about the up and coming Christmas night out while my mum was sat in a whhlchair chair. She hadn't been booked in yet (of course it wasnt a life or death illness but the personal chat was very unprofessional). And in the wards, yes, I'm afraid some nurses and staff do spend a lot of time chatting at their station. There is a lot of barely suppressed sighing when a relative goes up and asks them something with as short an answer as possible and one nurse turned her back on me to indicate the conversation was over (General ward, always at least one empty bed. The staff did NOT look like they were run off their feet but morale was definitely very low). Maybe all the chatter was work related, though that was not the impression we got. FIL and DM were in 2 different hospitals but FIL had a better experience.

@Tetraead

My husband worked at several hospitals Liverpool, Good Hope, Stafford and the Royal Shrewsbury and he thinks they will eventually privatize the NHS but it will not be sold off to the US. He actually thinks it won't be a bad thing if it improves services like catering and cleaning etc. We used a lot nurses from a private company who had been trained abroad and they were very good when I worked at Shrewsbury

Healthcare in Australia (free, it's called medicare) is so good compared to the NHS. If I want to see a doctor, I can just either walk into a surgery or open my phone and book one for when suits me.

Whilst that's brilliant for you as the user this suggests the system is very inefficient. The reason getting a GP appointment can be hard in the UK is because every second if their time is accounted for with appointments. Being able to literally walk into a surgery and get an appointment when you like means that some doctors or nurses are being paid a lot of money (and in Australia it is a lot compared to the UK) and having periods of time when they're essentially just waiting for someone to come in.

You're not compelled to use it Mr Farage, bugger off to your mates in the health insurance business.

This study shows all 35 OECD countries with universal care systems.
It shows spending, and number of doctors, nurses, etc per capita.

It is a good read and makes it obvious the UKs major problem is not enough NHS. It’s not the system itself that is failing. It is the fact that it is not large enough or funded enough to serve current population levels.

Out of the 28 OECD countries with universal systems, on a per-thousand-population basis, the UK ranks 25th for physicians, 19th for nurses, and 23rd for psychiatric care beds per thousand population (table A2, p. 43). As can be seen in table 3, after adjustment for age, the U.K. still ranks 25th for physicians (figure 3a), 19th for nurses (figure 3b).

For diagnostic technology (causing wait times). Per million population, U.K. ranks 24th (out of 27) for MRI units, 26th (out of 27) for CT scanners, 22nd (out of 24) for PET scanners, 19th (out of 23) for Gamma cameras, and out of 22) for Mammographs (table A3, p. 44). After adjustment for age, Canada ranks 22th (out of 27) for MRI units (figure 4a), 21st (out of 27) for CT scanners (figure 4b), 19th (out of 24) for PET scanners, 1st (out of 23) for Gamma cameras, and 21st (out of 22) for Mammographs (table 4).

Source: www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/comparing-performance-of-universal-health-care-countries-2018.pdf

If you want a system ranked higher like France, you will need to pay higher tax for it.

Sorry last sentence, should be U.K., not Canada.

Top this up with a culture of ‘care’ where the patient is often neglected and ignored, especially if elderly, with dirty noisy wards.

I agree - it can be terrible. I read the recent thread about women treated badly during/after giving birth in NHS hospitals - some of their experiences were absolutely awful.

If you want a system ranked higher like France, you will need to pay higher tax for it.

I would be very happy to!

Personally I've used the nhs very little in my life and so have my family, but our care has been quite shit to be honest.

They left my gran dying outside for 8hrs waiting for an ambulance - she only survived because a nurse happened to find her and called us to come over to keep her warm while we waited and waited and waited for help (it was the middle of winter). They then falsified her physio records to say she could walk up stairs etc so was fit to go home when she'd never actually left the bed in weeks. Another patient intervened to say they knew it was wrong and was told to 'shut the fuck up' and that it was none of their business.

I've had several issues with my maternity care so far and no one seems to know what they're doing. If it doesn't fit with the tick box system then they're lost. I should have had testing to determine a very serious illness that could cause the deformity and death of my baby but they refused it as my GP didn't want to type which test I needed on the 'other' section of blood test request. He said because there wasn't a standard tick box he wasn't going to order the test. He then refused to prescribe me the correct higher dose of folic acid as 'pregnancy isn't an illness' so he won't be involved in prescribing anything to do with it.

I slipped a disc during pregnancy and was sent to a larger hospital for a priority mri as I was paralysed and they believed it to be permanent. I was waiting almost 2 days for this and wasn't allowed to eat or drink for the entire period. I eventually got them to allow me sips of water but surely 2 days without a proper drink isn't going to do me any good. They didn't have a good reason for disallowing it either.

Our local hospital smells vile on the wards. It's dirty and the staff don't seem to care. They stand around chatting all day and get really pissed off if you ask them to help or do something.
Our a&e prioritise drug users over other patients to get them out before they start trouble so they walk straight in and get seen despite people being there with serious head injuries etc for hours.

I'm dreading giving birth or ending up with bad health as I'm sure the care I receive will be atrocious.
A big problem with the nhs is that a large proportion of those using it frequently aren't paying any taxes to keep it running.

There's been some wonderful stories about miracle survivals due to amazing doctors etc but these must be very much in the minority compared with the care most people receive.

I do think that they are treated as underpaid heroes as OPs title suggests. But I don't agree that they should be. They get paid to do a job and they should do it. In my town they get so many freebies and discounts yet other people work to help others and save lives yet don't get this treatment.
I'm also fed up of seeing in the papers every time someone leaves a note on an ambulance about their parking. So we really need to know each and every time? Then the do-gooders start leaving £20 notes on their windscreens and sticking it on social media about how wonderful they are. Sometimes they do park like twats with no reason - why should someone lose their job because they can't get their car out to go to work? I recently couldn't get to work as an ambulance parked at my bus stop despite it being an empty road and they walked 4 doors down to the patient they were seeing - I couldn't get out round the ambulance fast enough to stop my bus as they parked so close to the glass. If I'd complained then I'd be the one in the wrong wouldn't I because they're heroes .

I know a few nhs workers and they all say it's shambolic. So much paid to agency workers and external consultants when it should be paying for a decent standard of care.
It must be a lifeline for those that have the misfortune of being seriously ill and I hope I never end up needing them to save my life. I know I'm lucky to have rarely needed the nhs and I rarely visit a GP (can't get an appointment for weeks at a time anyway). It just seems sad that my experiences are few yet there have been no positives at all.

I agree that the NHS is a sacred cow and also it's a political football.
Health and education should not be a matter for party politics. There needs to be a cross party group of healthcare experts to investigate the shortcomings and address the serious issues which it faces.

Of course there are some wonderful people working for the NHS and many patients have received exceptional care, but there are also far too many who haven't. I am thinking, in particular, of the recent scandal of the hospital natal ward with the appalling record of baby and mother deaths/baby brain injuries occurring because the births weren't properly managed.

I don't agree that throwing more money at it is the only answer, although it might be some of the answer. There needs to be a thorough examination of the facts and a consideration of how things can be improved. All options should be considered, including possibly supplementing the NHS with private insurance, and charging something at the point of contact for routine matters, although there would need to be sufficient safeguards to protect the vulnerable and needy in society.

However, I see no reason in principle with people paying something - as a previous poster said, taxpayers are already paying vast sums into what sometimes appears to be a bottomless pit. The amount of waste which occurs is quite staggering. Nobody actually seems to take responsibility - as I said, it's just a political football and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Try finding a new dentist if you think NHS is free or universal

It really irks me when people say the NHS is free.

It’s free at the point of delivery. You pay via your national insurance.

I have private healthcare with work and always have, if ever I’ve needed to see a consultant I’ve used it. Waiting times on the NHS are awful.

That’s not to say it’s not a great concept, but it definitely has its pitfalls.

Many lllls,
Yes I have read most people in the U.K. are in favour of better funding for the NHS. That’s what needs to happen before any system wide changes
Centralised procurement can actually cost more money in convenience charges and travel. My personal experience is that it can also increase rates to the highest locality covered- as in paying Paris prices for work in Toulouse....so that would be equivalent to paying London prices in Leeds? (Perhaps?) The private financie initiative that the U.K. tried under Blair ended up being more expensive in the long run than just paying to build the hospitals up front. This could be another costly failure.

Have to be careful not to fall into the thinking that the NHS has plenty of money but wastes it. That is not the case as can be seen in every independent study done on the NHS by nonUK academics who have no political agenda.

Guessing you’ve never lived abroad and seen the alternative. I have, and I’ve never appreciated the NHS more.